https://matiane.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/joseph-ratzinger-what-will-the-church-look-like-in-2000/
Joseph Ratzinger: What Will the Church Look Like in 2000?
Professor Ratzinger’s radio addresses from 1969
The theologian is no soothsayer; nor is he a futurologist, who makes a calculation of the future based on the measurable factors of the present. His profession very largely withdraws from calculation. Only very slightly, therefore, might it become concerned with futurology, which itself is no soothsaying; rather, it ascertains what is calculable and has to leave the incalculable an open question. Because faith and the Church reach down into those depths from which creative newness, the unexpected and the unplanned, are constantly coming forth, their future remains hidden to us, even in an age futurology. When Pius XII died, who could have foreseen the Second Vatican Council or the postconciliar development? Or who would have dared to foretell the First Vatican Council when Pius VI, abducted by the troops of the young French Republic, died a prisoner in Valence in 1799? Three years earlier one of the directors of the Republic had written: “This old idol will be destroyed. This is what freedom and philosophy desire. . . . It is to be hoped that Pius VI will live two years longer to give philosophy time to complete its work and leave this lama of Europe without a successor.”1 Things were in such a bad way that funeral orations were delivered on the papacy, which people were forced to regard as extinguished forever.
